Weight training machines are highly popular with people interested in exercising to maintain their health and appearance. Conventional weight training machines typically include a weight stack that provides an adjustable load, and one or more exercise stations coupled to the weight stack that enable a person to exercise different portions of the body. At a first exercise station, for example, a user may stand upright to perform a desired exercise. Alternately, at other exercise stations, the user may sit in an upright or reclined position, or may lie in a supine or prone position, to perform the desired exercises. Thus, a common component of conventional exercise machines is a seat or bench for supporting the user in a sitting, supine, or prone position during an exercise.
FIG. 1 is a side elevational view of a portion of an exercise machine 100 that includes a bench 120 in accordance with the prior art. In this example, the exercise machine 100 includes a press station 102 and a leg station 104. The press station 102 includes a press arm 106 pivotally coupled to an upright member 108 of a support frame 109. A cable-and-pulley assembly 110 operatively couples the leg station 104 to a weight stack or other suitable load (not shown). In FIG. 1, the cable-and-pulley assembly 110 includes a cable 112 that is engaged with a pulley 114 disposed within the upright member 108 and that extends between the leg station 104 and the weight stack.
In operation, a user may position the bench 120 in a first position 122 that supports the user in a supine position (e.g. for performing bench press exercises using the press station 102). Similarly, the user may position the bench 120 in a second position 124 that supports the user in a sitting position (e.g. for performing leg extensions using the leg station 104). The exercise machine 100 shown in FIG. 1 is generally representative of a variety of conventional exercise machines, including, for example, those devices described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,779,601 issued to Ish, U.S. Pat. No. 5,549,533 issued to Olson et al., and U.S. Pat. No. 4,793,608 issued to Mahnke et al., which patents are incorporated herein by reference.
To accommodate users of various sizes, it may be desirable to move the bench 120 closer to or away from the upright member 108 along a lengthwise axis 126 (FIG. 1), such as, for example, to facilitate use of the press station 102. As shown in FIG. 1, this may be accomplished by providing an engagement member 128 of the bench 120 that slideably engages a horizontal member 130 of the support frame 109. This arrangement enables the user to slide the bench 120 back and forth along the horizontal member 130, allowing the user to adjust the position of the bench 120 with respect to the press station 102 as desired. In some exercise machines, to prevent the bench 120 from moving along the lengthwise axis 126 due to forces exerted on the bench 120, a locking assembly 132 may be provided which selectively locks the bench 120 in the desired position relative to the support frame 109.
Although desirable results have been achieved using prior art exercise machines, there is room for improvement. In some prior art exercise machines, for example, when a user desires to move the bench 120 along the lengthwise axis 126 in a direction away from the upright member 108 for using the press station 102, the user must disconnect the leg station 104 from the cable 112. Since the leg station 104 may be coupled to the bench 120, both the leg station 104 and the bench 120 may then be moved in the desired direction away from the upright member 108 along the lengthwise axis 126. On the other hand, when the user desires to use the leg station 104, since the cable 112 is of fixed length, the bench 120 and the leg station 104 must be repositioned at a location that is close enough to the upright member 108 to enable the leg station 104 to be reconnected to the cable 112. This process of disconnecting and reconnecting the leg station 104 from the cable 112 may cause undesirable delay and inconvenience during exercising.
Also, in some prior art multi-station exercise machines, other exercise stations may be coupled to the weight stack and may cause a tension on the cable 112 when used. In such a case, if the bench 130 is drawn outwardly away from the upright member 108 and another exercise station is used that causes a tension on the cable 112, the bench 130 may inadvertently be pulled inwardly toward the upright member 108, thereby degrading the user's exercise. This may occur particularly with exercise machines that do not have the locking assembly 132.
Furthermore, in the exercise machine 100 shown in FIG. 1, in order to adjust the position of the bench 120 along the lengthwise axis 126, a user must decouple the bench 120 from the support frame 109 by disengaging the locking assembly 132. The user may be inconvenienced and may experience frustration while performing this task for various reasons (e.g. inaccessible or inconvenient location of the locking assembly 132, difficulty in actuating the locking assembly 132, etc).
To avoid this inconvenience, the locking assembly 132 may be eliminated, however, this may allow the bench 120 to move undesirably along the lengthwise axis 126 during an exercise. Furthermore, after moving the bench 120 to the desired position, the user may forget to re-engage the locking assembly 132, which may also allow the bench 120 to move undesirably during an exercise. Finally, because the locking assembly 132 may be frequently engaged and disengaged, time and expense may be required to maintain the locking assembly 132 in proper working order. For these reasons, novel apparatus and methods that mitigate these characteristics of prior art exercise machines would be useful.